Elon Musk just sent a reminder to Bill Gates—and it wasn’t a friendly one.
After Microsoft co-founder Gates offloaded billions in stock, Tesla CEO Musk jumped into the conversation with the subtlety of a steel-toed boot. The short? Still an issue. The feud? Very much alive.
On Nov. 15, the stock tracking account Barchart posted on X: “Bill Gates Foundation dumped 65% of its Microsoft $MSFT position for a total of $8.8 Billion Wut?”
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The tweet included a screenshot of the foundation’s Q3 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, confirming a reduction of 17,073,499 shares, representing a 64.91% drop.
Tesla Owners Silicon Valley reposted the tweet and wrote:
“Dang, Bill is covering his $TSLA short.”
That was all it took to get a response from Musk.
“If Gates hasn’t fully closed out the crazy short position he has held against Tesla for ~8 years, he had better do so soon,” Musk replied the following morning.
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The bad blood between Musk and Gates dates back to that short. Gates previously confirmed in Walter Isaacson‘s 2023 biography of Musk that he had shorted Tesla and that the move didn’t sit well with Musk.
“Once he heard I’d shorted the stock, he was super mean to me,” Gates told Isaacson.
“But he’s super mean to so many people, so you can’t take it too personally.”
Musk did not take the short lightly. In an X post from September 2023, he explained why. Taking out a short position against Tesla, as Gates did, results in the highest return only if a company goes bankrupt! Gates placed a massive bet on Tesla dying when our company was at one of its weakest moments several years ago,” he wrote.
Musk continued, warning that shorts like Gates’ have real-world impact on retail investors. “Such a big short position also drives the stock down for everyday investors,” he wrote. “To the best of my knowledge, Gates still has that massive bet against Tesla on the table.”
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Musk also called out Gates for attempting to engage him on climate-related philanthropy while allegedly still holding the position.
